Marijuana - permanent anxiety?

ffej · Newbie Joined: 05 Mar 2007 Posts: 2

I have been smoking weed since i was 19, i just turned 32. I quit for about two years and then went on a trip to Denmark and visited Christiana in Coppenhagen where it is like a smoker's paradise - pre rolled joints and a gourmet selection of hash and weed from all over the world. since then i have gradually increased my use to where it was before i quit. When i wasn't stoned every thought i had lead some anger or violent thought. Does this go away after a while (i am on my 5th day pot free). Right now as i am typing this my stomach pains come and go. Like an intense pulse of pain for a minute and then leaves. Does this symptom go away. Other than possible cancer are there any permanent damages to my body or if i stay clean will my body heal itself to where i can be not so agressive. I am worried that i may have some permanent phsycosis or other mental problem that was caudse or triggered by pot use. Can anyone help me. I am a little scared. I quit smoking cigarets (pack a day) and i beleive that my body has very little permanent damage. What permanent damage could marijuana cause?

Guest · Guest

Ease out of smoking, if you stop suddenly then you're going to have much larger withdrawal symptoms. Just smoke a little less each day, and eventually you will be able to get down to one joint a week, and then stop. You will have a few days of anxiety with restless sleeping, chills and night sweats, but after all of that you will be surprised how great it feels to wake up energetic every morning.
Unless there is something deeper psychologically, then i recommend a professional.

Guest · Guest

I agree with all the posts about marijuanan and anxiety. I smoked pot for 3 yrs 15-18 like aboput 3 blunts a day. I also started experiencing panic attacks when i was really high. Infact it was the sole reason i quit because i couldn't deal with the anxiety. I'm 23 now and to this day i still have anxiety and it sometimes is still bad. Excersize definetly helps a ton but mainly i agree with a previous poster about having a sense of who you are will help calm you down. It was fun when i enjoyed smoking but if i knew then what i know now i would never have done it. I can honeslty say i regret ever smoking. It does feel better to know that its a common problem that can easily be dealt with.

Guest · Guest

Im 19 and have been smoking weed recreationally since I was 14. Anxiety, depression and panic attacks were fairly common, but I never really thought of them as much of a problem and began to see these behaviors as normal after awhle. Well I havent smoken in about 2 weeks, have only drank once, and I am the happiest man alive right now. Thinking clearly, thinking positive, just enjoying the ride. I think taking the medication adderal has immensely helped ease the process. This drug relaxes every muscles in your body, allows increased concentration, and is legal which reduces any chance of paranoia. To any of you with these past (and hopefully forgotten) problems I used to experience, do what I did. Abstain from use and presribe to aderral pills. You will feel great and rejuvenized. Hope this helps!

Guest · Guest

for ffej I'm 31 been smoking joints and bongs since i was 14 was fun at first but now a pain in the ass i stopped smoking pot at 22 for 2years and i tell u,the same stuff happened to me ass well. after 16 months my life felt more real all the pot thoughts stopped and even though i still smoked cigarettes i was still more alive.I spew that i started again but that was my decision

boss tycoon · Newbie Joined: 05 May 2007 Posts: 1

The negative effects of marijuana have played a larger part in my life than I’m willing to face or accept. The biggest one of which is the anxiety problems that arise sometimes when I smoke and when speaking in front of a large group such as a class. I know sometimes when I used to smoke I would put myself in either a poor situation in which I would be close to getting caught or I would smoke to much and become very self-conscious and nervous because the weed would trap my focus on my voice and my anxiousness. This occurred a number of times after I’d been a casual smoker for about a year, I continued smoking however because I have had some excellent times when I’ve smoked with friends and all my close friends are frequent smokers.
The fear I face when talking in front of large groups is new to me, I’ve always been a natural and gifted speaker but after a poor experience in the beginning of the year in a literature class my confidence has plummeted. I have attributed my anxiety each time I’m in a public speaking position to weed; I feel it strongly has aggravated my paranoia problem. I know it’s a psychological problem and it drives me crazy sometimes, honestly standing in front of my literature class to speak is the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced, and I get so nervous my voice starts to quiver and I think about everyone judging me.
I’m not naturally this way, mentally I’m very strong and I’m not just saying that. I have a great amount of ability and have a personality to accompany it, I’ve achieved a number of things in high school and am going to a good college next year. This problem though makes me feel like complete shit in certain situations.
I haven’t seen this problem happen to a number of people but it does happen to some I know of. Multiple times I’ve told myself I’ll quit smoking because of it but I don’t have the conviction or the support to do it. I’ll tell myself I’ll quit in the morning and later find myself smoking at my friend’s house that evening. All my friends smoke and I feel that if I stopped smoking I would miss out on a lot of stuff and they wouldn’t want to hang out with me anymore since they’d be smoking. I’ve seen it happen, people quit and loose their friends so they come back to the drug.
I’ve tried other drugs and I drink often but they don’t effect me negatively. Next year in college I plan on quitting but think I will be smoking more than ever. I really don’t know sometimes I don’t care and my love for having a good time and even an alternate state of mind is powerful, if you gave me a blunt right now I’d light it up and blaze that shit in the quickness. I know I will never go to therapy or take medication for this, I just wouldn’t, so I don’t know what will happen, but I do know that ganja is going to be with me for a long time.
Did I mention by the way that I was a state champion athlete two years ago but smoking was one factor in my current situation in which I’m not even on a sports team any longer. Physically it took its toll and for the record I don’t even smoke daily, I smoke about five times a month. A lot of smokers simply won’t get this but I know there’s a few out there who can relate, its funny how differently cannabis can effect people. If anyone has any suggestions on how to kill my anxiety I'ld greatly appreciate it.

Exodus · Newbie Joined: 09 May 2007 Posts: 1

I've only smoked marijuana since about January, but it is quite heavily for a newbie: once a day almost every weekday, and at least twice a day on weekends.

One time, I was at my friend's house and we were all watching TV. I was sitting on the couch after smoking two bowls and a blunt (I'm INCREDIBLY sensitive to marijuana) and all of a sudden, my head felt like it had exploded. It was terrifying and incredibly intense. There was a whooshing sound right before it happened, and then my eyes twitched and my brain almost... "crashed." It's really hard to explain, I'm sorry I'm not being clearer. I swear I could feel my eardrums bursting and my eyes squishing and my cranium shattering. It all felt so real, that for a split-second after each explosion, I had to convince myself that it didn't actually happen.

I tried to feel my pulse, but I was so confused and I couldn't figure it out. It felt like my pulse was racing faster than humanly possible, and skipping every so often. Whenever I "felt" my heart skip, my head would "explode" again. My vision would black out for a split-second. It kept going on and on, and it exploded about eight or nine times. I'm sorry I keep calling it an explosion, it sounds stupid I know, there's just no other way to describe it.

I started screaming because I didn't know what was going on and I thought I was going to die. My friends freaked out, but one - who is pretty experienced with marijuana - told me that I was just too high and that he'd been there before, too. Everyone kept telling me to just calm down, but my head was exploding so I couldn't.

Whenever my head crashed, I also felt a weird piercing inside my brain, and I kept having hallucinations of myself with a long thick needle pushed down through the top of my head. Whenever my head crashed, I had a vision of my head being stuck in a vise that kept tightening until it crushed my head. Whenever I think of that image now, I get a smaller lighter explosion.

Eventually, my high went away and finally this feeling did, too. But ever since this, I still get light random explosions and I've found that I can induce them myself whenever I think of the vise or the needle. The sensation is heightened while high on marijuana (but not nearly as severely as terrible as the first time), and I'm trying to quit.

The real problem is that now I'm paranoid, my brain explodes, and I have anxiety attacks at random, even while stone sober. I had moderate clinical depression before I started smoking, and thankfully it hasn't worsened. I'm not on any medication for it, so a medicinal conflict is not possible. I use Advair daily, an asthma medication (exercise-induced, not smoke-induced). I'm still really worried about it.

I am a male, 18 years old and I exercise six hours a day, five days a week. (I make my living as an athlete.) Sorry to get so personal, but I'm absolutely terrified that it won't go away and I don't know what to do.

If anyone's had this or knows what it is, please help me. I don't know what to do.

passingthrough · Newbie Joined: 08 Jun 2007 Posts: 1

I just stumbled on to this site and the original post in this thread really touched me because I have been there. I'm 37 now and have not smoked for years but from the age of 14 until 17 I smoked multiple times per day. Things got really ugly at the end of my 17th year. At first, pot started making me paranoid and irritable. Then, I started passing out when I was stoned and when I woke up I would be totally lost, no idea who I was or what was going on. After each of these instances I would have panic attacks on and off for a week or so. After the third time that it happened I had to quit smoking. Trouble is, the panic became permanent. I was a total wreck for about 6 months, no social ability, insomnia and random fear about everyday things. I regularly thought my heart was going to stop or that I was going to go crazy. Eventually I got through it, I did a lot of reading about the mind and about controlling behavior. I learned to identify the fearful thoughts and worked through it. I was lucky and I got through it. My parents went through hell with me and I feel bad to this day for subjecting them to that.

Anyway, I was permanently changed from the experience. I went on to go to college and now have a good career but I still tend to have problems with mild anxiety. However, last year I went through some medical trouble and all the panic attacks started up again. I had to go back into a rigorous program of meditation, exercise and also worked through a panic attack recovery program on CD called "attacking anxiety and depression". After about 9 months of work I'm back to my pre health trouble self. Mostly normal but some light anxiety at times. No one in my family has any sort of panic issues or mental health problems. I'm convinced that smoking a lot of weed while my brain was still growing was not such a good thing for me. I was a super mellow kid until 14. After three years of smoking, I was a paniced mess.

My advice to anyone going through this is to stop smoking and find another outlet. Pot isn't for everyone, and it has a way of changing in the way it effects you as you get further along with your smoking. I'm not some anti weed crusader, I'm just saying there is a possibility that you can harm yourself with heavy use in some cases and once you f*** yourself up, all those stoned times seem really insignificant and totally not worth it.

Peace to everyone on this board.

RobGray3454 · Newbie Joined: 15 Jun 2007 Posts: 1

hi im 17 and Im goin through through the same exact shit your goin through it sucks lol. One day i decided to go smoke with some friends cause we had alot of weed so we rolled a couple of blunts and smoked them while driving. It was my weed so when it was past to me i took like 4 or 5 hits then passed it so i was getting really high then after the blunts were finished we decided to go cruise somewhere and find something too do about 10 min into the drive i felt my heart palpitate ive had it happen b4 so i was like w/e then it kept doing it and wouldnt stop i started to get a little scared then it went into a panic attack what i felt that triggered the panic attack scared the shit out of me it felt like my heart filled up with blood and pushed out hard then it felt like it got cold where my heart is, then my heart kept palpitating even more i thought i was having a heart attack my arms started to go numb i felt faint i pretty much thought i was goin to die then laterwhen i got home i calmed down went to bed and that was it. i decided to take a break from weed for a bit then after 2 weeks i had another panic attack without any weed in my system i was confused tho cause nothin triggered it i was just sitting down watching tv after that i havent been able to stop them it been 2 1/2 months now and i still have them. I cant even live my normal life any more im always home afraid to leave the house cause im afraid of another panic attack ive left the house several times and still same shit happens.It also made me change the way i think i dont think the same any more im always filled with weird or bad thoughts it also put me ito a deep depression i lost interest in everything all i wanted to do was lie in bed thinking whats the point of getting up but now i have interest in the things i once loved again like playing guitar. Good luck with all the shit your goin trough hope u can get better i know i do ,my emails ******

Marijuana - permanent anxiety?

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